It seems that our Emperor who has no close is at it again. Apparently, he is not happy with the people he chose as his Presidential advisors. So, he is employing that phrase that has become closely associated with Donald Trump: “You’re fired!” He is firing his advisors right and left and it appears that more firings are imminent. Sorry Donald, this is not your reality show. It’s time you realize that and started acting like a President of the United States and not the driver of the clown car in a circus!

I may be wrong on this one. After all, I have never been the greatest judge of what qualifies as mature behavior. But, it appears to me that Donald is acting like a spoiled immature little rich kid. Wait a minute!! Isn’t that what he is?

It seems to me that the American people have lost touch with reality themselves. After all, more often than not, we seem to elect total idiots to run this country. Either that, or complete megalomaniacs like Trump or – my favorite megalomaniac – Richard Nixon. He claimed he was not a crook after the Watergate story broke and he was forced to resign or face impeachment. If being the authority figure behind a criminal burglary is not being a crook, then I have no idea what qualifies you as a crook. In my estimation, Richard Nixon should have faced criminal charges for his part in authorizing the Watergate break-in. He escaped prosecution thanks to his good buddy and Vice President who succeeded him -Gerald Ford. Ford always struck me as a nice guy. Not too bright, but a nice guy. Maybe too nice. We have to eliminate Presidential pardons before the disgraced President is even indicted, let alone convicted. These crooks need to assume responsibility for their actions while in office. Being the President does not give you license to commit larceny, murder, burglary, treason, or any other criminal action while in office.

When I was in high school back in the mid-60s, my favorite rock groups were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, as well as the Beach Boys and the Four Seasons. When I went off to college in 1966, my taste in music changed. I became a huge fan of Bob Dylan, the Kinks and Fleetwood Mac. Not the Fleetwood Mac that became very popular 15 years later, but rather Peter Greens Fleetwood Mac. You see, although the band is named for the drummer and bass player, it was originally a Peter Green sub-band. How Peter lost that band is a very tragic story which I will tell in just a few minutes.

Fleetwood Mac from 1967 to 1970 was predominantly a blues band. In fact, had Peter Green not suffered his “tragic accident”, I think Peter would be discussed in the same breath with Eric Clapton as the greatest British blues guitarist. To see what I mean, click here. The first song you will hear is “Black Magic woman.” Most people associate that song with Santana hat I mean, go to YouTube and search “Fleetwood Mac live 1970.” But it was Peter Green who wrote this song and Fleetwood Mac who originally recorded it. To this day, Fleetwood Mac’s version is still my favorite version.

There has been a great deal of commotion on both sides of the political aisle regarding healthcare in the United States, especially the Affordable Health Care act passed a couple of years ago which is euphemistically referred to as Obamacare. Trouble is, calling it Obamacare is a misnomer. The final form of that act as passed by Congress is a far cry from what then Pres. Obama and the Democrats in Congress wanted. What we got with that bill was a compromise between the Democrats and those relatively moderate Republicans, a compromise that could be passed in Congress. 20 million people who were previously uninsured could get healthcare coverage. So, I think it is time that the Republicans took their share of responsibility for what both sides consider a relatively bad bill. The conservative Republicans think it smacks too much of socialism and they want to eliminate any signs of socialism in this country. That would include Social Security, Medicare, labor unions, and just about all regulation of large corporations. The Republicans want unbridled capitalism. That may sound like a good thing, but I suggest you read the novels of Charles Dickens to get an idea of what life under unbridled capitalism would really be like. The conservative Republicans tried to paint a rosy picture of the benefits of unbridled capitalism. They are either absolute fools or absolute liars. Either one should preclude them from making the laws that govern this country.

I don’t talk about religion very much on this blog anymore. I tend to save religious discussions for my Christian Heresy blog. I do however often discuss politics here. Since this post is about both religion and politics in the United States, I thought it was better suited for this blog.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July – our Independence Day. Last night I watched the movie version of the Broadway musical 1776 on Turner Classic Movies. The movie was actually better than I expected, mainly because it was less of a musical than I thought it would be. I found the dramatization of some of the debates in the Continental Congress rather interesting. I don’t know how historically accurate those dramatizations were. At one point in the movie, our Founding Fathers were recommending the various and sundry changes to the original wording of the Declaration of Independence. One of the delegates from the South asked for the inclusion of the phrase containing Divine Providence. He felt that the colonies would have no chance winning a war against Great Britain without divine help and that our declaration should acknowledge that. That’s certainly makes sense given the times and the culture of the colonies in 1776.

Writing this post has been very difficult. I’ve rewritten it several times, which is something I don’t normally do. Normally I’d just write it and then let Michael edit it for me. But because of the emotional investment that this post requires, I have had a hard time putting my thoughts and feelings into words that make sense to anyone other than me. After all, isn’t that the goal of any writer worth his salt? Making his words make sense to his readers.

As some of you may know, I am now 69 years old. That is a lot longer than I thought I’d ever lived. I probably have spent more than 50 years of my life pretending to be someone I am not. Actually, I think a lot of this do that. No matter how much we pretend, there always is a core that is the genuine you or me. Sometimes that core gets so buried that you lose track of who you really are. That’s what happened to me. I spent so many years being one different me or another, that by the time I got to a point in my life where I could actually be myself, I really wasn’t sure who that was. It took me probably almost 20 years to really figure out who I was and to get rid of all of the sides I had accumulated over the first 40 years or so of my life. It is and has been the love of my wife Elizabeth that has made it possible for me to undergo a rather torturous and lengthy reconstruction of myself.

In my previous post I mentioned that breaking up with Alice, my high school sweetheart, was the second worst day of my life. For those of you who know about my life a bit, obviously the worst day was the day my mother was killed in an automobile accident in January 1966. I talked quite a bit about that day on other posts, so I’m not going to spend any time on it today. What I want to talk about today is the third worst day in my life – the day my marriage to my second wife, Glenna, ended on a very ugly note.

My relationship with Glenna was rather unusual even for the 70s. We had an “open” marriage, that is, no required monogamy on either side. I reluctantly agreed to this condition for us to get married because I was so totally “bewitched” by Glenna. She truly was the most captivating woman I had ever met up to that point. What I did not realize until it was far too late was that what Glenna wanted out of life was far different from what I wanted. She wanted material security along with her freedom to do as she pleased, while I wanted a stable traditional marriage with lots of love, both physical and otherwise. Material security did not mean much to me then and it still doesn’t. My interests and passions are more, for the lack of a better word, spiritual than those of most people. By spiritual, I do not necessarily mean religious in the traditional sense. Rather, I am looking for something more mystical, more esoteric. I am looking not only for a physical union and a psychological union, which is pretty much the definition of a good traditional marriage. I am looking, and apparently have found, a soulmate: my present wife Elizabeth.

There is something special about your first love. No matter how the relationship ends, you carry a torch for that person for the rest of your life. That is certainly true about my first love, Alice, who I met back in the summer of 1964. I had just finished my sophomore year in high school. She had just finished her freshman year at a different high school. We met at a district convention for Teenage Republicans of Pennsylvania, which was held at Valley Forge.

I really don’t remember how we actually met during that can convention. All I remember is spending most of the day with her. The reason I was at that convention was because I had been elected treasurer of the local TAR chapter. The guy who had just been elected its president was a friend of mine named Jack. He was a senior. He asked me if I wanted to go with him to the convention. I said sure. I really had nothing better to do that day. It turns out Alice had been dating one of the other members of my local club who did not go to the convention. His loss, my gain. 🙂

I realize it has been some time since my last post on either of my two blogs. I am afraid I experienced a creative drought. The creative juices just dried up. I am not sure why. I am happy to report that those juices are flowing again and, hopefully, there will be quite a few new posts in the next couple of weeks. This is the second one today. I have already written a new post on Christian Heresy and am working on the sequel to that one. That said, let’s talk about our insane Peerless Leader.

I admit I have had problems keeping my mouth shut throughout my whole life. Lord knows, I have stuck my foot in my mouth, often all the way up to my knee, more times than I can count on both hands and both feet. However, I have now handed my crown for social “saux pas” to the man with the hair like an orangutan. You would think that someone with his business acumen (self-proclaimed) would have the ability to keep his mouth shut when necessary. And that is doubly true of someone who is the Pres. of the United States. Not our Donald! If I were Donald’s wife or daughter, I would close his Twitter account immediately and destroy any and all cell phones he has

For those of you who were never fans of the Allman Brothers band, the title of this post is a tribute to one of my favorite songs of theirs, “In memory of Elizabeth Reed.” The Allman Brothers were an iconic band for my generation. They were still playing together, with some new personnel, a few years ago. I saw them on TV (one of the music stations on cable) front a performance in 2013 or 2014. Given the fact that a number of the members of the band where into their 60s then, I doubt they performed all that often, which is way sad.

The Allman Brothers were basically a blues band. Greg was the lead vocalist and keyboard player. Boy, did he have the voice for the blues: kinda low and gravelly. The band has gone through more personnel changes over the last 50 years than even the Rolling Stones. Their first two losses there were the loss of Duane Allman to a motorcycle accident just when the band was getting popular. Duane also appeared on the Derek and the Dominoes album. It is his guitar that is at the forefront on “Layla.” For someone to outperform Eric Clapton is really doing something and Duane does on that song.

This summer will mark the 50th anniversary of what has become known as “The Summer of Love.” In 1967, my generation – or at least part of it – espoused that hippie philosophy of peace and love. That summer was marked by many gatherings of young people all over the country. These gatherings were called “be-ins.” The biggest one was held in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Those of you who are close to my age probably remember the anthem of that summer: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Yes, I did wear flowers in my hair that summer. No, I did not go to San Francisco until a few years later and then only for a visit.

However, I have my own little story of what happened that summer. I was in The Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia one day at an impromptu gathering of “flower children.” We were just sitting around the park playing music and singing, celebrating life and the summer weather. The police, however, took exception to what we were doing. We were all arrested for disorderly conduct and hauled off to jail. We all posted bond and were given a court date – all on the same day.